11 Rental market summary
This section summarizes the existing stock of rental units within the county and provides an analysis of recent price and production trends in the rental market.
11.1 Rental housing stock
The proliferation of rental housing throughout Chesterfield County has been the result of affordability challenges across the region, as well as an increasing preference of young professionals and baby boomers for the flexibility offered by renting. This has resulted in strong demand for rental housing on a spectrum — from luxury rentals to single room occupancy.
11.1.1 Total renters
Over the past decade, the number of renter households in the county has steadily been increasing. From 2010 to 2019, the number of renters in the county has gone from 24,312 to 30,273 — a 24 percent increase.
In 2020, there was a two percent decrease in renters. But this decrease of 633 renters may be attributed to the collection challenges of the 2020 Census count and historical undercounting of renters. As rising interest rates and home sales prices persist, the number of renters in the county can be expected to rise as well — in addition to the need for a diverse mix of rental housing opportunities.
11.1.2 Rental housing type
The rise in renters in Chesterfield County has not led to a commensurate rise in diverse housing options for renters. Over a third (37 percent) of rental housing in the county is made up of single-family detached homes — that’s an estimated 10,984 homes. The other third of rental housing is multifamily housing located in buildings with 5 to 19 units. These are typically low-rise and garden style apartments. The remaining third is a mix of smaller multifamily like duplexes, townhomes, and manufactured homes.
The distribution of rental housing type has largely remained the same since 2010. The major increases in rental housing have been among single-family detached home rentals (+ 2,502 since 2010) and multifamily buildings containing 5 to 9 units (+ 1,545). Although single-family rentals provide growing families with much needed space, multifamily development can more effectively address a rapidly growing demand at scale.
11.1.2.1 Single-family rentals
Single-family home rentals (SFR) in the county have been on the rise — experiencing a 28 percent increase in ten years, the most substantial percent growth among all rental housing types.
SFRs are a growing trend in the rental market as lifestyle changes and affordability challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has also had a dramatic impact on the demand for SFRs, as many individuals and families looked avoid higher density apartments and had the ability to work and learn remotely.17
Based on an analysis of owner address and parcel address, there are an estimated 13,205 single-family home rentals in the county. The majority of single-family rental owners in the county (61 percent) live somewhere else in the county, while 29 percent live somewhere else in Virginia. The remaining 10 percent of single-family rental owners live out-of-state.
THIS NEEDS FLESHED OUT A BIT MORE BASED ON THE SCRIPT BELOW.
Maybe requires a better map that can be zoomed in on. I think there needs to be a bar chart showing distribution of owner location. And maybe it's worth doing a spatial join to Magisterial District to note where these are concentrated.

#> Reading layer `ParcelsEnriched' from data source
#> `G:\My Drive\chesterfield-market-analysis\data\ParcelsEnriched.shp'
#> using driver `ESRI Shapefile'
#> Simple feature collection with 142366 features and 80 fields
#> Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
#> Dimension: XYZ
#> Bounding box: xmin: -77.87828 ymin: 37.21729 xmax: -77.24623 ymax: 37.56251
#> z_range: zmin: 0 zmax: 0
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84

#>
#> Multifamily Other Owner-occupied SFH Renter-occupied SFH
#> 9237 21538 98364 13205
#>
#> FALSE TRUE
#> 111483 85